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Books Ireland (March 2002): Review Shirley Kelly, ‘the Blow in from Oregon’, interview with Molly McCloskey, in Books Ireland, Feb. 2002, p.47. Title story submitted to Phoenix as novel and rejected; advised by Lilliput to rewrite as novella, adding stories; title-story concerns Henry, a former baseball hero who descends into alcoholism, leaving home and daughter, and the latter’s quest for recovery along with his daughters attempts to reunite with him. McCloskey recounts that her own father left home when she was eleven, but was not an alcoholic; b. Philadephia, 1964; came to Ireland in 1989, setting in Sligo; work incl. free-lance journalism; m. an Irishman in c.1992; and later separated after three years, living alone in a cottage for four further years before moving to Dublin in 1998 after a brief return to Philadelphia, where she commenced writing; publ. short story in Force 10 (ed. Dermot Healy); scouted for Curtis Brown by David Marcus; completed MA in philosophy at UCD: worked writing abstracts; quotes: ‘One of the reasons I like it here is that it’s so small, like a stage. I come form a place that’s so huge and my family has had a peripatetic life. It’s nice to find such a strong sense of place.’ Further, ‘It’s not that the place hasn’t impinged on my consciousness and imagination. It has, deeply, but I think I could only ever write about ireland as an outsider and I’m beginning to do that now. I’ve just written a story for a new anthology, which is set in Ireland but from an outsider’s perspective, and I’m working on a novel based on that story.’ Steinbeck visited Ireland and wrote about his experience in Collier’s Magazine. Desmond Traynor, review of Dermot Bolger, The Valparaiso Voyage (Flamingo); Brendan Brogan, compulsive gambler, banished to garden shed to become ‘Hen Boy’ when his widowed father remarries a young woman, Phyllis, who brings her previous child Cormac with her; conflict with Pete Clancy, son of bullying Fianne Fáil-man; returning to Dublin-Navan in the current period of economic boom, ten years after faking his own death in a Scottish train crash to escape debts and provide for his wife and son out of the insurance, Brendan rescues a Nigerian woman Ebun from a racist attack; re-encounters his childhood antagonists; literary detective fiction ending in shoot-out. Traynor remarks, ‘What is striking … is tha tit is when Bolger is concentrating on the more personal and intimate details of his central character’s life, and his tangled, fraught and emotionally ambivalent relationships with his prevaricating father, with the insecure Phyllis, with the gay Cormac, and the equally gay Conor, that the writing hits its truest and most resonant stride, and mines a deep vein of feeling.’ Deirdre Purcell, Marble Gardens: Riba is on a mission to save her teenage daughter Zelda, who is suffering from cancer; both narrowly escape a plan-crash; her friend Sophie falls for Brian, while Sophie’s husband falls for Yvonne. ‘A satisfying beach read with more substance than most’ (Sue Leonard, Books Ireland, March 2002, p.58.) Thomas Kinsella on Clarke: ‘his knife-glance curiously among us’ (Quoted by Kevin Kiely, reviewing Kinsella’s Collected Poems, in Books Ireland, March 2002, p.61.) Grattan was descended from Sir William Brereton, a Tudor administrator in Ireland; poss. of Gaelic extraction (viz., McGrattan); son of MP for Dublin who once translated Lucian in a version which his son presented at school and was beaten for; ed. Trinity; bar, London; ‘briefless lawyer’ in Dublin; received support of Charlemont; voted £100,000 by Irish parliament and accepted £50,000 for purchase of Tinnehinch, Co. Wicklow; m. in 1782 (aetat. 36); retired from active politics; blamed the govt. for its own crimes and provoking the crimes of the people in 1798; returned to House of Commons to denounce the Union; sat in Westminister as first member for Malton and later for Dublin; pressed for Catholic Emancipation; bur. Westminster Abbey. Arthur O’Connor prob. descended from Cromwellian soldier called Conner; held land around Bandon; ed. Bandon; entered, TCD, 1779 (aetat. 15), having already read Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations; bar; acted as Lord Kingsborough’s election agent, 1790, and appt. High Sheriff, Co. Cork; entered House of Commons, 1791; publish pamph. representing repression as the best (worst) means of encouraging rebellion; claimed that Ireland was ruled by a cabal in a parliamentary speech of 1795; United Irish emissary to Hamburg and France; emprisoned in Dublin Castle and held in solitary confinement for six months; rearrested with others at Margate on release, heading for France; tried and sentenced on the basis of a cipher in his razor case; incarcerated at Fort George, Scotland; venomous feud with Thomas Addis Emmet, also imprisoned there; released in 1802 on condition of ‘banishment’; served as general in Irish Legion in France; married late, to a much young woman; died on his French estate; remained a non-dogmatic Protestant. Justin Quinn, Gathering Beneath the Storm: Wallace Stevens, Nature and Community (UCD Press 2002), incls. section on Thomas MacGreevy. Malachy McCourt, Danny Boy: The Legend of the Beloved Irish Ballad (US: Running Press 2002), 142pp. The words in two verses were written by Edward Weatherly, an English barrister, in 1913; the original reputedly composed by Rory Dall O’Cahan, a blind harper who played in Limavady market square. Books listed: [Copied to Datasets 20/02/02 BS]
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